How GIS Has Changed Our World

The ESA unveiled its new ice thickness map at the Paris Air and Space Show. The sea-ice thickness map is the result of ESA’s CryoSat mission which, over the last seven months has been delivering precise measurements to study changes in the thickness of Earth’s ice. ESA’s Earth Explorer CryoSat mission is responsible for the precise monitoring of changes in the thickness of marine ice floating in the polar oceans and variations in the thickness of the vast ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.

CryoSat measures the height of the sea ice above the water line, known as the freeboard, to calculate the thickness. The measurements have shown that spring 2011 is the third lowest extent of sea-ice recorded by satellite.

Also recently Esri announced a new ocean basemap. The Ocean Basemap is available as a cached map service in ArcGIS Online, providing a variety of maritime GIS applications. For more information on the map, click here.